How to type White Square
To type White Square (□), press Alt + 9633 on Windows, holding Alt while typing the digits on the numeric keypad, or write □ in HTML. On any system you can copy it from this page, or enter its codepoint U+25A1 directly: Ctrl+Shift+U then 25a1 on Linux, or 25a1 then Alt+X in Microsoft Word.
White Square
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+25A1
- Windows
- Alt + 9633 needs regedit
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 9633 | Above 255, so Windows will not accept it as typed. Copy the character instead. |
| Mac | N/A | Press the keys together. |
| HTML | □ | Paste this into HTML source. |
| Unicode | U+25A1 | WHITE SQUARE |
Symbols related to White Square
The Unicode code chart points from □ to ☐, and the rest are filed under square in CLDR, the keyword list Unicode publishes alongside the names.
Other symbols
□ lives in the Geometric Shapes block (U+25A0-U+25FF), squares, circles, triangles and diamonds. Within Unicode it is classified as So, a symbol.
What White Square is used for
In mathematical notation □ is an ordinary symbol: it carries no special spacing and sits in an expression the way a letter does, standing for a thing rather than doing something to the things around it. That is the classification unicode-math gives it, and it is what decides how the symbol is set: $\mdlgwhtsquare$ in LaTeX, in maths mode rather than in a sentence.
Unicode publishes a second list of names for □ in CLDR, the keywords its own search data offers rather than the formal name, and it is hollow square. That word is what somebody looking for this character is liable to type when White Square is not the name they know it by, and the search on the symbol lists matches it as well as the Unicode name.
What □ gets confused with
Unicode's own confusables table, the one used to catch lookalike domain names, groups □ with ☐ (U+2610, Ballot Box). They are separate characters that render close enough to be mistaken for one another, so a search or a string comparison will separate them where your eye will not. If White Square is not matching where you expect it to, one of these is the usual reason.
What Unicode says about White Square
The standard recognises □ under other names as well: quadrature, alchemical symbol for salt. Those are a formal alias, not a nickname, which is why they turn up in other people's documentation for the same codepoint.
Unicode annotates □ directly. Against U+25A1 the code chart carries the note “Used in astrological contexts for aspect square”. It adds: may be used to represent a missing ideograph. That is the standard saying what the character is for, rather than an inference from its name.
The code chart points from □ to Ballot Box, combining enclosing square (U+20DE), white medium square (U+25FB), white large square (U+2B1C) and geta mark (U+3013). These are the characters the standard thinks you might have meant instead, which makes them the ones worth checking when White Square looks nearly right but not quite.
How White Square behaves in software
□ is East Asian Ambiguous: one column in a Western locale and two in a CJK one. That is why a table that lines up on your machine can break on somebody else's, with no change to the text at all. It carries no direction of its own, so in a line that mixes English with Arabic or Hebrew it takes the direction of the text around it rather than forcing one.
What people ask about White Square
How do you type a square symbol?
You can press Alt + 9633 on Windows, with Num Lock on and the digits typed on the numeric keypad. That produces □.
What is the square symbol?
□ is WHITE SQUARE, encoded at U+25A1. The Unicode code chart annotates it “Used in astrological contexts for aspect square”, which is the standard's own statement of what it is for. It is distinct from combining enclosing square (U+20DE) and white medium square (U+25FB), which the chart lists beside it precisely because they are confused for one another.
Every way to write White Square
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+25A1 |
| Decimal | 9633 |
| UTF-8 bytes | E2 96 A1 |
| UTF-16 bytes | 25 A1 |
| HTML entity | □ |
| HTML numeric | □ or □ |
| CSS | \25A1 |
| JavaScript | \u25A1 |
| Python | \u25A1 |
| URL-encoded | %E2%96%A1 |
| LaTeX, in maths mode | $\mdlgwhtsquare$ |
| SVG | 25A1.svg · (SIL Open Font License) |
If □ arrives as â–¡
One character has become three, which is what a three-byte UTF-8 sequence looks like when each byte is read separately: E2 96 A1 read as Windows-1252 gives exactly â–¡. The text is intact and the damage is in the reading, so setting the reader to UTF-8 restores it and retyping does not. A rectangle instead of the mojibake means the opposite: the encoding is right and the font has no glyph at U+25A1, which for a character this far outside Latin-1 is common in older office fonts.